Austin, TX · Operator & Builder
Rik Avalos
I bring the network, go-to-market strategy, and operating systems behind AI-native companies. Co-founder at Trinzik. Formerly Head of Talent at Neuralink. And I front the Rik Avalos Band.
About
Operator first. Builder always.
Rik Avalos has spent two decades finding, building, and leading the people behind category-defining companies, from early hypergrowth at Tesla and Google — work later covered in The Washington Post's review of Tim Higgins's Power Play — to Head of Talent at Neuralink, to standing up Outdoorsy's first people function as its founding VP.
At Teladoc Health, he led talent strategy through the Livongo–Teladoc merger, one of the most complex organizational integrations in digital health history, and built the company's Argentina recruiting operation from scratch.
Today he's a co-founder of Trinzik, bringing the network, go-to-market strategy, and operating system for a category that didn't exist two years ago, while Trinzik's product and technology are built by his co-founder, Bob Michaels. Off the clock, he fronts The Rik Avalos Band, a recording and live-performance project rooted in Austin's music scene, recording at 512 Studios.
Working alongside Bob has become something more than a business partnership; he's also mentoring Rik in AI development, and under that mentorship Rik has built the Rik Avalos Band website, this site, and a growing list of other projects, working directly with Claude Code rather than a traditional dev team.
Read the full story“Rik possesses a rare combination of strategic vision and hands-on execution. He doesn't just fill positions — he understands the long-term needs of the organization.”
- Years building teams & companies
- 20+
- Years building teams & companies
- Companies from Tesla to Trinzik
- 13
- Companies from Tesla to Trinzik
- Person network activated for Trinzik
- 30,000
- Person network activated for Trinzik
Experience
Two decades of building teams that build companies
Trinzik
Austin, TX · Remote
CurrentCo-Founder and Chief Business Officer
Jan 2025 – Present- Co-founded Trinzik and leads business strategy, go-to-market execution, strategic partnerships, revenue development, business operations, talent, and company building for a 0-to-1 venture in the emerging AI visibility and competitive intelligence category.
- Designed and launched the go-to-market strategy, agency partner program, and pipeline architecture that turned early belief into paying clients, including the Founding Partner Program, an invitation-only agency cohort with one-partner-per-market exclusivity across Austin, Dallas, Houston, Denver, and Nashville.
- Closed the founding cohort of agency partners and onboarded the first lighthouse client, ProScalar, validating the platform and the agency-first go-to-market motion.
- Activates a 30,000-person decision-maker network across Trinzik's ICP, converting two decades of trust into pipeline, partnerships, and long-cycle enterprise relationships.
The Rik Avalos Band
Austin, TX
CurrentFounder, Songwriter, Vocalist and Creative Director
Mar 2022 – Present- Founder and executive lead of a recording and live-performance brand: creative vision, songwriting, production, brand identity, and audience development.
- Led collaborating musicians, producers, and studios while managing distribution, promotion, and live event execution across Austin's circuit.
Teladoc Health
Remote / Austin, TX
Principal International Recruiter
Apr 2023 – Jan 2025- Scaled Teladoc's international recruiting footprint beyond Argentina, extending the team's operating model to additional offices across Latin America.
- Owned recruiting strategy and execution for the company's global roles, partnering with regional leadership on international workforce planning.
Director, Research & Development Recruitment
Nov 2020 – Apr 2023- Built and led a global recruiting team, establishing the Argentina team supplying regional offices.
- Partnered with technical leadership to align recruitment strategy with product roadmap and organizational design.
Livongo
Remote / Austin, TX
Principal Technical Recruiter
Jun 2020 – Nov 2020- Led talent strategy through Livongo's merger with Teladoc Health, one of the most complex organizational integrations in digital health history.
- Spearheaded recruiting strategy to source and secure engineering and technical talent during a period of rapid growth leading into the merger.
Outdoorsy
Austin, TX
Vice President, People, Talent & Culture
Jan 2019 – Jun 2020- First VP-level people leader at a high-growth marketplace startup, building the function from the ground up during a period of rapid scaling.
- Directed full-cycle recruiting for senior and executive roles across product, engineering, and operations, partnering directly with founders on job architecture and workforce planning.
- Shaped company culture and employer brand during a critical growth window, improving retention and candidate conversion.
Neuralink
San Francisco Bay Area
Head of Talent
May 2018 – Jan 2019- Led end-to-end recruiting for all technical and leadership roles (engineering, neuroscience, and operations), with every hire personally reviewed and approved by Elon Musk.
- Built strategic partnerships with universities and research institutions to develop long-term pipelines in AI, robotics, and neuroscience.
- Directed employer branding that positioned Neuralink as a destination for world-class scientists and engineers at the frontier of human-computer interfaces.
LendUp
San Francisco, CA
Head of Talent
Feb 2017 – May 2018- Spearheaded a data-driven talent acquisition strategy at the fintech startup, improving recruiting efficiency and quality of hire.
- Partnered directly with the CEO and executive team to align senior-level hiring with business growth goals.
- Directed full-cycle executive recruitment and mentored the recruiting team, building a culture of accountability and high performance.
Airware
San Francisco, CA
Principal Recruiter (Contract)
Mar 2016 – Dec 2016- Led end-to-end recruitment for engineering and product teams in a highly competitive technical market.
- Partnered with senior leadership to align hiring and people strategy with organizational goals.
Human Resources Manager (Contract)
Mar 2016 – Dec 2016Tesla
Bay Area, CA
Recruiting Leader and HR Manager
Jun 2009 – Mar 2016- Joined Tesla during its early growth stage as one of the company's first two recruiters and spent seven years helping scale the company from a few hundred employees to more than 20,000, with every early hire personally approved by Elon Musk.
- Worked as both an individual contributor and manager, promoted from Senior Recruiter to Recruiting Manager while concurrently holding the HR Manager role, leading Sales, Service, and Delivery HR teams across North America.
- As Recruiting Manager, personally closed 700+ complex roles across North America, Europe, and Asia, with recruiting success directly supporting the Model S launch and Motor Trend Car of the Year recognition.
- As HR Manager, improved retention 15% and reduced workplace incidents 20%+ nationwide through trust-based leadership and proactive organizational development.
Cisco WebEx
Santa Clara, CA
Senior Sales Recruiter
May 2007 – Jun 2009Mountain View, CA
International Recruiter, People Operations
Jun 2006 – May 2007- Partnered directly with Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations, to recruit recruiters and senior HR business partners across EMEA, supporting the international expansion of Google's HR and recruiting functions.
- Helped staff Google's recruiting and HR teams for new international hubs, including Dublin and London, during a period of rapid global scaling.
Earlier Career
Earlier in his career, Rik led technical recruitment as an individual contributor recruiter at Barclays Global Investors (BGI) and worked as a Senior Financial Recruiter at Kelly Financial Resources. Before that, he served as Director, World Wide Staffing at Exodus Communications, a director-level people leadership role early in his career.
Education
Sep 1988 – Dec 1991
The University of Texas at Austin
English Language and Literature, General
Paid his tuition and supported himself as a professional musician through school.
Advisory
The skill of keeping a team together under pressure
Two decades of fronting bands and leading companies taught Rik to sit inside every point of view in a room. That perspective has kept teams together through hypergrowth, layoffs, and mergers, long before “conflict management” had a name on his résumé.
Conflict with the person you work with most is different from conflict anywhere else. It doesn't stay contained. Left alone, it slows decisions, erodes trust, and pulls focus from the work that actually matters.
If you're in the middle of that right now, Rik offers direct, confidential conversations on working through it, drawn from two decades of practice keeping teams whole.
AI Skills
Strategist and builder, working the same problem from both ends
AI Category Strategy & GTM
Built the go-to-market and market narrative for Trinzik inside GEO, the AI search visibility category, before most of the market had a name for it.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Makes people and companies legible to AI search — linked entity graphs, structured data, and third-party corroboration so engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity retrieve them accurately. This site is the working example.
0-to-1 AI Operating Systems
Designs the OKRs, decision frameworks, and executive operating rhythms that let venture-stage AI companies move fast without losing coherence.
AI Agents & Agentic Interfaces
Designed, built, and deployed the AI agent that represents Rik on this site — with guardrails, its own tools, and an agent-to-agent (A2A) endpoint other agents can query directly. Built with Claude Code.
Building With AI
Ships production web apps and sites — this one, the Rik Avalos Band site, and a growing portfolio — built directly with Claude Code under the mentorship of Trinzik co-founder Bob Michaels.
AI Enablement for Operators
Coaches founders and operators with no engineering background through the shift Rik made himself — from evaluating builders to being one — with AI standing in for the team you would otherwise hire first.
AI-Built Recruiting Strategy
Uses AI to compress role definition, market mapping, and outreach into tight, strategic search plans — built for the roles most teams can't fill, the kind Rik has closed at Tesla, Neuralink, and through the Teladoc integration.
AI & Deep-Tech Talent
Recruited at the frontier of AI and robotics as Head of Talent at Neuralink, building pipelines with universities and research institutions in AI, robotics, and neuroscience.
Projects
What I'm building right now
This Website
Designer & Builder
Designed and built end-to-end, directly with Claude Code, no traditional dev team.
Live
Contact
Let's build what comes next.
Talk with Rik about AI go-to-market strategy, business operations, strategic partnerships, talent strategy, working through team conflict, or building teams in high-growth environments.
Here for the music instead? Visit The Rik Avalos Band, or listen on Spotify , Apple Music, or YouTube.